I almost backed out. But when Aleksandr brought out
his extra pair of climbing boots, and they fit
perfectly, I couldn't say no. An hour later, we were
trudging across the glacier, Aleksandr's rucksack
stuffed with crampons, ropes, and other climbing
equipment. Our goal was Camp 1, the first stop for
climbers attempting to summit Kan Tengri. It would
only take 2-3 hours, the serious climbers told me, and
was relatively easy. But at the foot of the mountain,
as I stepped into my crampons and looked up a sheer
wall of snow and ice, I was extremely nervous, and not
a little afraid.

Kan Tengri - The Sky King - stands at just over
7,000 meters (21,000 ft), a towering pyramid of rock and
snow, slightly twisted like a ibex's horn. The two
arms of the Inylchek glacier cradle the peak, which is
jointly claimed by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China.
It is the tallest mountain in the Tian Shan - The
Heavenly Mountains - a rugged range that runs between
Kazakhstan and Kygryzstan before slowly dying in
western China's Xinjiang province. Though Kan Tengri
is considerably shorter than more famous peaks such as
Mount Everest (8,848) and K2 (8,611 meters), it is
taller than the tallest mountain in South America
(Aconcagua: 6,959 meters), North America (Denali:
6,194 meters), Africa (Kilimanjaro: 5,895) and Europe
(Elbrus: 5,633). It is not an easy climb, either. To
date, only three climbers have reached the summit this
year - and more than 100 have tried.

Getting to the base of Kan Tengri had been an
adventure in itself. From Almaty, we drove several
hours to the east before heading south into the
Kazakh-Kygryz border region. Here the roads worsened,
and we had to pass through several border checkpoints,
where bored soldiers flipped through our passports,
but never appeared to look at our visas. After five
hours, we arrived at Karkara base camp (~2,000
meters), a pleasant arrangement of tents situated in a
beautiful valley. The next day, we climbed a nearby
mountain to acclimatize to the heights of the glacier
base camp (~4,000 meters), and the following day, we
flew in a gigantic Russian MI-8 helicopter up to the
base of Kan Tengri itself.

Our camp was a collection of tents balanced on slowly
melting platforms of ice. The bathrooms were
outhouses built over crevasses, and all meals were
served in a canvas mess hall near the glacier. It was
freezing at night, and Nori and I did not have enough
cold-weather clothing. One evening, I woke to hear
the sounds of something moving outside our tent. I
was quite frightened: there are snow leopards in the
Tien Shan, and I was sure there were wolves and bears
too. I woke Nori up, and clapped my hands and shouted
to scare the beasts away. But they kept coming back.
Finally, I stood up and stepped outside the tent and
shined my headlight on - nothing. Later the next
evening, I told Eesay, the camp interpreter, about my
scare, and he laughed and pointed at the ground
nearby. There was a round little rodent with cute
spade-shaped ears - certainly nothing to be afraid of!

On second day at the glacier base camp, our guide,
Aleksandr, had led Nori and me on a five-hour walk up
to the head of the glacier. We started early; most of
the top of the glacier remained frozen, and we
crunched across teeth of frost. As the sun and
temperature rose, tiny trickles turned into rivulets
and soon we were jumping over small streams of
meltwater. Often these streams combined and burrowed
twisting tunnels through the glacier, perfectly smooth
bobsled runs that plunged into bottomless crevasses.
All around us were beautiful mountains, many nursing
tributary glaciers that flowed down to Inylchek and
piled up in jagged icefalls. Directly in front of us
was the Marble Wall, a tall, flat face ribboned with
white, grey and black strata. On the way back,
Aleksandr saw me watching the people climbing Kan
Tengri. "We go Camp 1?" he asked.

And that's how I found myself high up the flanks
of Kan Tengri. My Mom used to ask me, "Do you always
have to over-do it?" Yes, Mom, I do. Aleksander
sensed that I wanted to test my endurance, so our
breaks were infrequent and of short duration. I was
panting heavily, but I was full of adrenalin. Only
100 meters from Camp 1, the slope becomes nearly
vertical, and must be climbed with the aid of a fixed
rope. My thighs were already quaking from our rapid
ascent, and I laughed with fear as Aleksandr began
attaching new equipment to my climbing harness. The
most important tool was the "zhumars" - or ascender
-
a hand-held device that clamped onto the fixed rope
and could only move forwards (up), providing much
needed slip protection, and allowing the climber to
use upper body strength. It took me several tries
before I got the hang of it, and I slipped once in the
process, sliding a meter down the slope before the
rope that ran from the zhumars to my harness arrested
the fall. At least I knew the equipment worked.

Taking a deep breath, I started back up, placing
my feet carefully and stopping several times to rest my
screaming thighs. The fifteen minutes passed very
slowly, but suddenly, the pitch moderated and I was at
Camp 1! Exhausted but ecstatic, I plopped down on a
rock to catch my breath and marvel at the view. The
glacier was a highway of ice far below me, a corridor
cut between majestic peaks that only seemed small due
to the presence of Kan Tengri. I could barely see our
tents on the other side of the glacier. Above me, the
pitch from Camp 1 to Camp 2 seemed impossibly steep,
an eight-hour struggle along a knife-edge ridge. I
was proud to make it to Camp 1, but looking at the
route to Camp 2 made me realize that high alpine
climbing is not for me.

Just thirty minutes after we arrived back at base
camp, I got a salutary lesson on the risks of
mountaineering. We were slurping up bowls of borshcht
(surprisingly tasty beet soup) in the mess tent when
we heard a terrific crack followed by a deep rumbling.
We rushed outside and watched in amazement as a
massive avalanche roared down the face of Kan Tengri.
Nearly a third of a huge serac had given way, and the
cloud of snow and ice that it churned up went as high
as Camp 1. We had never actually been in the path of
the avalanche, but we certainly would have been
buffeted by the accompanying winds and gales of snow.